


Damage Control

by Morgyn Leri (morgynleri)



Series: Daegon Rings [3]
Category: Doctor Who (2005), Torchwood
Genre: Alternate Universe, D/s, F/M, GFY, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-19
Updated: 2014-01-19
Packaged: 2018-01-09 05:45:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1142173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morgynleri/pseuds/Morgyn%20Leri
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Owen remains where he's landed after his trip through the Rift, and finds himself in a greater role than he'd had before. Back home, Jack and Ianto's relationship evolves and changes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Damage Control

**Author's Note:**

> The second sequel to [Fallen](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1142060), where Owen doesn't go back to Cardiff and Torchwood.

He comes back, after he's taken Jack and Ianto home, to Cardiff and Torchwood and the Rift, and away from the brief, painful glimpse of their lost team member. He knows she won't let him try the same tack as before, and he has no plans to do so. He's changed too much, and so has she, though for her its been longer than for him.

She invites him for dinner in a small dining room, just him and her plus one. Plus one is dressed more than he was at the party; no need to show off her favorite quite so blatantly to someone who knows how the game is played. A dance of words and people that keeps planets together, most of the time.

The Doctor doesn't chatter on as much as he is wont to in this regeneration, though she doesn't appear to mind when he does. It's a way, perhaps, for her to distinguish between the man who'd come to her broken and bleeding without a mark on his body, and the man he is now. Scarred, but not freshly wounded. Or, at least, he hadn't been, not before...

He changes the topic of conversation, launching into a lively set of stories of his adventures, carefully avoiding talking about subjects that cut too deeply - into him, or into them. No need to hurt this friend, he's hurt others enough. Time to inflict less of it on the universe, at least for now.

Watching Owen, he knows he was right about his observation at the party. He's happy here, bantering with the Doctor as the stories give way to discussion, though he looks to Aristan for permission to join in first. He's bright, and sharp, and maybe a little bit brittle at the edges, but beneath it is a confidence that is undimmed by what he is. Maybe boosted, instead, but the Doctor isn't sure. He doesn't know what Owen was like before Daegon, before Aristan, after all.

He knows he could, with the TARDIS. He could go back, and meet him back before even Torchwood, but that isn't going to be a proper comparison, now is it? No, that isn't going to work. Because Torchwood changes people, and he's certain it's changed Owen, and he doesn't know how.

After dinner, Aristan doesn't invite him to stay for the night, and that's not as much a surprise as he thinks it should be. That he's slightly hurt by it is another surprise, and his goodbye is distracted as he tries to figure out his own emotions and thoughts. He locks the TARDIS door behind him, and curls up in the jump seat to sort it out.

* * *

Jack stands on top of the Millennium Center, the breeze coming off the bay chilling him a little without his greatcoat, but he ignores it. He knows Ianto will have woken up by now, he's been gone long enough for the warmth to dissipate from his pillow, and it's something that bothers him. Ianto never cared to sleep at the Hub before, always insisting that if Jack wanted to stay the night with him, they do so in a proper bed.

Maybe its just exhaustion, and nothing more... dangerous. After a few hours with those rings... He shakes his head, a bit of a grin on his face. He's never thought about the possibilities like this. Even with his willingness to try just about anything, some things just don't interest him, and he's always thought of Daegon Rings as cheating, somehow. Another item to re-evaluate now, and perhaps explore a little more completely than he had the first time around.

Though he still thinks they're cheating.

* * *

Ianto knows the moment Jack leaves the bed, though he continues to pretend to sleep, rolling slightly towards the warmth of the sheets Jack's vacated. He listens to the soft rustle of fabric and creak of leather as Jack dresses, the clump of his boots on the rungs of the ladder. He waits to get out of bed until he hears the faint grind of the outer door opening, moving as silently as he can.

Even as his body protests movement, he gathers his clothes, heading for the communal shower. He turns the water on as hot as he can tolerate without scalding himself, just standing beneath the spray, his eyes closed.

He doesn't loose track of the time, though the desire to do so flits across his mind as it does every time. Fifteen minutes under the cascading water before he bothers to reach for his shampoo, then the water, turning the knob with a vicious twist until the water runs cold before he works the gel into his hair. He shivers as he rinses it out, but he doesn't turn the water back to warm.

He's dressed in his suit once more, and making coffee before Jack returns. He nods a simple greeting, focused more on the delicate art of making the perfect cup of coffee. It's only the caffeine in the dark brew that keeps him awake, and long practice that keeps the mask up even though he knows Jack doesn't mind when he lets it slip.

"Did you sleep at all?" Jack sounds only mildly curious, and not at all surprised, though Ianto knows that it means little.

"Does it matter, sir?" Ianto doesn't turn, deliberately keeping his attention on the coffee, and his tone non-committal.

"You need to sleep sometime." The slight rustle of fabric as Jack shifts. Perhaps leaning against the wall nearest Ianto, watching him as he works.

"So do you," Ianto counters, adding a small measure of cream to his cup. He lets a faint smile play across his face, lifting the cup as he turns.

Jack is watching him with a faint hint of annoyance in his expression, and Ianto lets his smile widen just a fraction to show he knows exactly what game he's playing, and he doesn't particularly care if Jack approves or not. There's only one person who's ever been able to make him leave it aside for a few years, but Lisa's gone, and this is better than remembering why.

"Go home, Ianto. Get some sleep." Jack's tone is pure command steel, and Ianto takes another sip of his coffee in response, before tilting his head slightly. He'll go home, but there his compliance ends.

Jack sighs, grimacing slightly, but still gives Ianto a pointed look, and a nod toward the door. Even if the Welshman doesn't sleep, Jack doesn't want to have the absolute certainty of him in the Hub.

"Goodnight, sir."

* * *

He's quick to understand when he finds his door unlocked on a morning when no one comes to wake him, to bring him a morning meal. She smiles when he sits at her feet, his head leaning back against her knees. She feeds him from her plate, and he licks her fingers clean when he's had enough, drawing a rich, throaty laugh from her.

She leaves him to the computer with a kiss that's both a promise and a threat. He wonders for the first time where she goes when she leaves him alone here. Not to one of the others, he doesn't think.

He leaves the medical journal he's reading, and wanders the house, ignoring the closed rooms politely. The lack of sound is enough to know she's not there, and he doesn't want to know anything more than that, not of them. He hesitates at the door that leads to the more public part of the house, and then continues on. Even now, he can't go there without her command.

With no sign of her, he makes his way back to the computer, silent for a moment before he makes an inquiry about where Aristan is. He's surprised when there is a return on his question, though not in her location. The idea of Aristan as part of the ruling council of the city isn't a surprise, though he does wonder why she doesn't chose to be part of the greater government. She's capable of it, he's sure.

He waits in the room they ate breakfast in for her to come home, his mind chasing itself in circles as he works out the place of the information from the journal. The room is painted in shadows and warm flickers of gold when she returns, and he sees exhaustion in her face as she settles into her seat. A day and more with the ruling council, and he has no doubts that she's more tired than she'll let show.

Pulling off her shoes, he ignores the smells of dinner as its brought in favor of the task he's chosen. Fingers press firmly against the soles of her feet, finding each meridian point, his face turned up to watch hers, and catch every nuance of expression that flits across it. The fractional relaxing, shoulders resting against the back of the seat instead of held stiffly away, the pause to actually chew her food.

She reaches down to cup his chin in her hand, tilting his head up to meet his gaze, looking for something there; what she's searching for he doesn't know.

"Sit with me, Owen. Please." She doesn't make it sound truly a request, but there's less command in it than she's used in the past.

He hesitates, and she raises an eyebrow, asking without words what's keeping him from granting what she wants. It's enough to draw him to his feet, to the chair she hooks closer. He picks it up, placing it right next to hers, staying close as he settles into the unfamiliar comfort. Just him and her, and he doesn't understand her reasons for this, only that it's strange.

She leaves him at his door that night, carding fingers through his hair a moment, smiling when he presses a quick kiss to the inside of her wrist.

"Not tonight, pet. Today was all debates, and I can't give you my full attention as I should. The votes are tomorrow, and there shall be plenty of time for me to rest once those are done. Rest now, and dream of life."

He closes his own door, his hand lingering against it for a long moment before he turns for his bed. It's long hours before he sleeps, thinking of the day, trying to decide what has changed.

* * *

_He's on his knees, the weight of the rings around throat and wrists more than the physical, comfort and possession layered together, tangled to the point he can't tell where one ends and the other begins. Looking up at the one the rings belong to, a face that's chillingly blank, unreadable when it shouldn't be._

It takes a long moment to shake off the dream, and the sleep, and for a moment he isn't sure where he is. The soothing hum around him, and in the back of his mind is what cues him in. TARDIS. He's trying to figure out why he's offended that Aristan wanted him to leave after dinner.

Perhaps... Perhaps it's that he's been where Owen is now, and some part of him wants to return to that simplicity. He can't, but it makes sense. He's lost so much recently, and there's a comfort in knowing the only responsibility one has is to obey the rules and whims of one's owner.

Well, so long as that person isn't a megalomaniac bent on universal domination, at least. A bitter smile twists his lips. But even then, he was happy to let the Master, mostly, get away with anything, so long as he didn't have to think about it. Until he had things in place for his plans to work.

He sets the controls automatically, leaving Aristan's garden for now, though he knows he'll be back. He wonders why he comes back here, though he knows he'll never find the same welcome he did the first time. She's never been a companion, and he knows that for all he labels her friend in his mind that she's not. It's not the right word. His mistress, he's her pet, was her pet, can't be her pet again.

And, he thinks, that's all he was. A pet. Owen is more than that. Means more to the woman who's older than the one who took him off the street, gave him a few months of peace, of not thinking beyond that night, beyond what she wanted of him.

He shakes himself, drags himself back into the present, and sets coordinates for Earth again. No particular time, he lets the TARDIS choose. Time to pick up a new companion. He's loosing himself in the silence without someone to chatter at.

* * *

"Tell me."

"Tell you what?" Jack wants Ianto to clarify his command, though he suspects he knows exactly what Ianto wants to know. Suspects, and isn't ready to share. Jack's not even certain why, only that he doesn't want Ianto to know what goes on in his mind during those brief hours of sleep.

Ianto isn't inclined to be indulgent and explain what he means, and Jack has to struggle for breath a moment as the collar tightens in response to the annoyance directed at him. A scrap of memory flashes through his mind, and he gasps out a strangled sound he thinks might be a plea, or negation, he's not certain.

"Jack?" Ianto's voice is closer than he expects, and he reaches out, finding the soft fabric of Ianto's shirt. He's crouching next to Jack, and it's a moment before Jack realizes that the collar is no longer wound around his neck. "Tell me." The command is quieter, but no less demanding, and this time Jack doesn't try to evade it.

"Nightmares. A year the rest of the universe has... forgotten, because it never experienced it." He isn't quite sure how to phrase it. "A year of death, Ianto."

Ianto's hands wrap around his wrists, over cuffs still there, and he pulls Jack against him, back to chest, his arms crossed, and Ianto's around him. "Sleep, Jack." His voice is quiet, and there's a dark note to it that disturbs Jack. "There are no monsters in the dark here."

* * *

Ianto wakes up before Jack does, still holding him tightly against him. It's the first time he's slept in four days, and it disturbs him that he can sleep when he has Jack in his bed. Not the close contact, or the warmth of another body. Not even that it's Jack, or perhaps because it is Jack. Jack, who forgave him for something he still is unable to forgive himself for.

Or perhaps because he sleeps when he doesn't think he deserves that escape from doing what little he's allowed to help protect the city he put in danger when he came with Lisa.

He tightens his arms around Jack, his fingers curling possessively over the warm metal bands that have his name etched in alien letters across them. His name, firmly wrapped around Jack's wrists. His, to hold onto as long as he can. Not forever, because one day he'll be gone, dead, and Jack will live on, but for a few years, this is his. No one else's.

"Not quite how I imagine waking up in your bed..." Ianto cuts off Jack's sleep-husky words with a squeeze of his hands, telling him without a sound that he is enjoying the silence, and shut it.

It's most of an hour before they get out of bed, though Jack tries to make it longer. Ianto touches one of the cuffs, a thought flicked in their direction, and Jack reaches for his clothes instead, a faint wince crossing his face. A cup of coffee is waiting when he comes out of the bedroom, pastry beside it.

* * *

The shop is quiet, a contrast to the crowded street outside, and the ring-maker speaks only in the quietest of murmurs, his tools still until he has the information he needs. Aristan cups Owen's cheek in one hand as she brushes the fingers of the other over the clasps, catching the rings before they can hit the floor. He isn't afraid, not here, of what will happen, merely confused and curious.

"Just a change in the words, my pet." She strokes his hair, leaning forward to press her lips to his temple, her voice barely louder than the artisan's. "Still mine, as you have chosen, but not caged."

"Will you be keeping these, _herrin_?" The man nods to the rings she still holds.

"No." She is still watching Owen. "It is not a set I shall use again." She drops them into the artisan's waiting hand, her thumb stroking across Owen's cheek for a brief second before it drops, and she looks over at the ring-maker. "We shall return for the fitting later. You have my instructions for the etching already."

"Indeed, _herrin_." He smiles at them, his words not doing anything to ease Owen's confusion. "May your years be long for her sake, sir."

He follows Aristan as she moves along the streets of the market sector, closer than her shadow on her heels, and as dark in the navy shirt and trousers he's wearing. There's no quiet for him to ask her what is happening, until they come to a broad courtyard he doesn't recognize, in front of a building of layered roof-tops that remind him of pictures of pagodas on Earth.

"It's the council-house." Aristan answers his question before he asks, drawing him to one side, where he can look his fill. "The center of the city. My city." She curls a hand around the back of his neck. "Our city, perhaps one could say. I would have you as more than my pet, Owen. It is something I've never wished for in the past, with any other. Time enough, my parents would say, that I chose a _gemahl_."

"Why?" One word expresses it all, and is inadequate to encompass it at the same time. Owen watches her face, and she just leans closer to kiss him on the temple.

"There are no words that are enough for this. Only that I have both lost sight of what I am, and am more intimately aware of it at the same time. And that, perhaps, is what those inclined towards romance might call love. I would not care what word it is used, only that the it is."

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted 20 November 2007 on LiveJournal.


End file.
